Serious business of music

By WILLIAM DART

Composer John Elmsly turned 50 a few weeks ago, but the official celebration comes next Sunday with a concert of music by and for the birthday man in which composer colleagues such as Gillian Whitehead and Juliet Palmer will offer musical tributes.

Elmsly is serious when it comes to bringing his music into the world. The way he assiduously pursues a point of detail in a discussion finds reflection in his exquisitely gauged scores. He carefully weighs answers to my questions, resisting any exhortation for "buzz phrases".

He remembers the thrill of an early work being performed at the Cambridge Music School in 1974 and the rewards of his study in Belgium later in that decade, especially with the highly politicised pianist and composer Frederic Rzewski.

I am reminded that he is very much a performing composer, happy to pick up his baroque flute to play his Stilldream K or to pound an electronically revved-up harpsichord to liven up a Karlheinz Company concert. Elmsly has been the driving force behind the Karlheinz Company and most of the university's contemporary performances.

As an associate-professor in the music department, he is a selfless advocate for colleagues and students.

Yet his own works are woefully under-represented on CD. Two of the few available are Resound!, perhaps the most beguiling of the Auckland Philharmonia's Millennium fanfares, and the boppy Gestauqua for brass and electronics on Grant Cooper's Points in a Changing Circle album.

Sunday's programme offers the chance to hear two of his Dialogues (for clarinet and piano, and horn and tuba), played by the musicians who originally occasioned them.

"I know that Dialogues seems like an abstract title," says Elmsly, "but it is so much more interesting than Duo. Somehow, I feel that the musicians are actually speaking to, and with, one another and are interacting."

I have always been taken by the clarity of Elmsly's work. It is music you can see the sky through. Elmsly puts it down to his desire for "simplicity with what I hope is a colourful harmonic language" and "admits to a great fascination with the progression of sounds".

Philosophies such as these have led to minimalist techniques cropping up in the orchestral Pacific Hockets and the popular Three Pieces for Piano, but these works are far from the pulsating throb of Philip Glass and his school.

"It's a point of communication. I use a lot of repetitive, evolving figures and repetition is a perceivable change, which is a pretty vital issue for the audience."

Some of Elmsly's most engaging work is done in the electronic studio. He likes the freedom from restraint that happens when he closes the studio door behind him. "There are very few preconceptions in the listener's or the composer's mind.

"It's like a complete blank canvas and that's not the case with a piano piece or an orchestral piece. There's a whole baggage of the past there. You can shut your eyes to it, but you can't make it go away."

And special worlds have been evoked in pieces like his 1987 In Memoriam: Rainbow Warrior, 1994's Drift for viola and tape, and the elegiac The Voice of Experience, which distils 10 years of sound exploration into just over three minutes of enchantment for the first New Zealand Sonic Art CD.

As Elmsly says: "In all music I look for magic, the singularities, the things that don't just get through a collection of notes or sounds but which leave a strong aftertaste, define a memorable character, want to be heard again." ...

* Happy Birthday to You. A celebration of the music of John Elmsly, University Music Theatre, 7.30pm Sunday.